


My Name with His Winter

by wellthatsood



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8481667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellthatsood/pseuds/wellthatsood
Summary: Late nights lead to thinking. Thinking leads to asking.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So uh, this fic was not premeditated or planned at all. But I had some dialogue in my head while falling asleep that I wanted to jot down and instead I... wound up writing an entire fic, start to finish. On my phone. In the span of 45 minutes. This is the fastest I've ever completed a fic.

It’s late July and they’re sitting on the iron of Charlie’s fire escape as the city settles into sleep around them. They’d been talking business at dusk, mulling over all that Darmody business down in AC as clouds turned to dim purple and ebbed nearer into darkness. But they’d long since lapsed into silence. More than once, Charlie considered suggesting they head inside to bed, but he’s too tired to make his mouth work. Besides, it’s at least a little cooler outside, with the hint of a breeze against their skin. He’s got his legs through the bars, feet swinging in the air above the alley in the back. He’s leaning his temple against the rail and staring at Meyer, with his back to the wall, cigarette between his lips, and chin tilted towards the stars. 

Meyer might be falling asleep or maybe that’s just Charlie, who’s feeling heavy with a fatigue that wraps around him like a blanket. It’s the kind of late and the kind of dark that makes everything seem not real. It’s the kind of silence that feels too free, too different, too much a world apart from the waking hours. Maybe that’s why it happens. 

It happens without Charlie thinking or approving. He hadn’t even been wondering it or anything, just watching Meyer in a haze.

“Why me?” Charlie asks, with curiosity but surprisingly little other emotion. He might be asking Meyer to repeat a number or explain some strategy. Nothing much to it. Just a question that slips out, easy as day but only allowed at night.

Meyer turns his chin from the night sky and Charlie swears there’s no light in the whole world except for at the end of his cigarette. It’s low though and Meyer looks until it burns down to his fingers and he flicks it down into the alley. Charlie watches it fall until he can’t see the little glimmer of ember anymore.

“What about you?” Meyer asks.

Charlie shrugs because he knows he shouldn’t be saying things like that, but now that it’s out, he wants his answer. Whatever Meyer will give, at least. Without looking, he reaches over to squeeze Meyer’s knee, like that’s explanation enough. “You know. Me.”

Meyer’s quiet for a moment. “I don’t know, really,” he says and it’s honest, Charlie can tell. “These kinds of things, they’re funny. They just—just are.”

And maybe it is funny because Charlie chuckles. “Never thought I’d find a question could stump you, Little Man.”

“Mm well, had to happen eventually. Besides,” he says and his voice drops lower, “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Me?” Charlie’s pitch rises in contrast to Meyer’s, like he’s offended by the asking, doesn’t understand the question. “Well you—you know—you’re a fuckin’ genius. Next biggest thinker since—since them _Greeks_ , all them put together.”

“Yes and the girls are all lining up at my door to hear my every thought.”

“If they knew what was any good, they would be,” Charlie says with determined, absolute truth. Then he pauses, rolls his sleeves a little higher over his elbows, and adds, “Too bad for them though, cause I’d fight ‘em off.”

Meyer snorts. “I can see it now, you against every girl for five blocks up and over.”

“I’d win,” Charlie mumbles, like any of it is even a consideration or a possibility. He sighs though, and presses on with too much sobriety. “Still and all. Could have somebody real nice, if you wanted. Could be anything with that brain of yours, get your pick of ‘em all.”

Meyer’s looking at him with that skeptical expression, like when Charlie’s told a really bad joke. He looks down, fishes for his cigarettes, and lights another. For a moment, the flash of his lighter illuminates his face in dazzling orange framed in stark shadow. Then they’re back in the dark and Meyer’s sighing smoke that wreathes his face.

“You must have me confused for someone else,” he replies too bitterly. “I don’t exactly have your—” But he catches himself, like he made a mistake.

“My what?” Charlie urges.

Meyer exhales and the smoke curls from between his lips, drifting up into the night. “Your… charm and good looks,” he answers with clenched jaw, definitely not looking at Charlie, who beams.

“So that’s it, huh?” he asks, swiping Meyer’s cigarette. He keeps shooting glances as he puts it between his lips, puckers around it, and inhales deeply until his cheeks hollow.

“Is _what_ it?” Meyer takes back his cigarette as Charlie exhales smoke in a deep sigh.

“Your answer. Why me,” Charlie reminds, in case Meyer forgot the start of their conversation. Like Meyer ever forgets anything.

Meyer stares at him in a way that’s a little funny. Not in a way that would make Charlie laugh, but in a way that seems foreign on his face. His brows tilt too close together, mouth drawn. “No. It’s not my answer,” he says, too earnest, too odd.

But he continues in a tone more familiar, leaning back and addressing it all to the dim, dark window at the top of the neighboring building. “It’s not inconsequential,” Meyer admits, and he sounds a little embarrassed. “But certainly not the sum of it.”

“Yeah?” Charlie is beamIng again and Meyer is intent on his cigarette, to avoid that dangerous smile.

“Yes,” he confirms.

Charlie smirks with satisfaction and stretches his arms up into the air, spine cracking. Then he’s hunched forward again, wrapping his arms around the bars as he hugs himself against them. “I guess for me, it’s the way you clocked me in the jaw.”

Meyer sputters and coughs and almost drops the cigarette, knocked to the edge of surprise and a laugh. _“What?”_

“You know, when we first met,” Charlie says like it even needs explaining. “Course, you was just a baby, so it wasn’t nothin’… you know, in that kinda way at first,” he amends with his usual thoughtful scowl and a gesture between them. Meyer raises an eyebrow and his lips quirk in acknowledgement. Then Charlie’s back to hugging the rails of the fire escape. “But it just happens that way. Like you punched off a piece of me and took it home with you, you little shit,” he says with a deep chuckle and thumps Meyer on the thigh with the base of his fist.

Charlie shakes his head before Meyer can even respond, carrying on a conversation all to himself. He rests his forehead against the railing, staring down. It’s too dark to even see the pavement below. “Sounded less dumb in my head,” he explains and falls silent again, with a joke that hasn’t gone off like he planned.

It stays silent too and Charlie stays still, the cool metal against his bare arms and forehead a relief in the humid night air. He’s got his eyes closed and he’s just about to suggest they head in when Meyer clears his throat, speaks in a nervous rush.

“You were skinny as a rail and shivering under your coat and I hadn’t seen you in months and I—I guess I forgot what it was like. When you smile. Like it wasn’t winter anymore.”

Meyer goes quiet and with him, the city seems to hold its breath into a hush. Charlie hears his own breath too loud in his ears and the rattle of his hands wrapping tighter on the rails.

“It—it ain’t winter now,” he says lamely, and it’s a struggle to remember how his voice works. His warm hand finds Meyer’s thigh, as though to prove it.

“Well,” Meyer says with a puff of smoke, letting his hand rest atop Charlie’s. “It never is, with you.”


End file.
